The telecommunications industry utilizes cables containing a plurality of finely insulated copper wires. These insulated copper wires carry the telecommunications signals. When it is necessary to connect an individual user into the telecommunicatons system, a drop wire from the user's house must go out to the main cable. To connect the plurality of homes at a given spot, the cable must be split open to expose the internal wires. Once exposed, these wires are subject to degradation and breaking unless environmentally protected. One way of protecting the cables is with a heat-shrinkable pedestal closure to surround the splice and the cable. This is an effective means of environmentally sealing the splice. However, many areas for reasons of safety or the surrounding environment do not permit an open torch to be used to seal the pedestal closure.
Thus, a non-heat-shrink closures devised to seal the cable would be desirable.
Non-sealed mechanical closures permit the fine copper insulated wires to be exposed to attacks by oxygen and moisture and/or water vapor. To prolong the lifetime of the fine copper wires it would be desirable of having a means for sealing the cable splice area without using mastics or other adhesives in the splice area which make reentry an extremely difficult and time consuming operation. Thus, it would be highly desirable to have an environmentally controlled liner capable of being sealed and unsealed and resealed in a facile manner.